


Since The Last Time Somebody Died

by DangerousCommieSubversive



Series: Our Bright, Disturbing Multiverse [8]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Teen Titans, Young Avengers
Genre: Acceptance, Canonical Character Death, Coping, Dimension Travel, Gen, Imperialism, Loneliness, Music, Survival, adjustment, language learning, teen heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 08:25:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangerousCommieSubversive/pseuds/DangerousCommieSubversive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noh-Varr crash-lands in the Altered Marvel Cinematic Universe and finds himself unexpectedly taken in by a team of young heroes unlike any he's ever met before, in a world full of wonders he could never have imagined.</p><p>Features shameless exposition, Noh-Varr being a good imperialist, and a fair amount of going on about how awesome music is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Since The Last Time Somebody Died

**Author's Note:**

> Mainly this story is an excuse to do team set-up for the Young Titans, the vast combined teen-hero team that the Young Avengers and the Teen Titans (and Merlin Baker) form when they're hanging out together. The YT are fairly important to the next big Multiverse story, which I _am_ working on, no worries, so I figured we needed a meet-the-team thing. It's also me getting comfortable with Noh-Varr--I _do_ love him, but I've never written him before.
> 
> The title of this story is from a Lyle Lovett song, "Since The Last Time," which is the prettiest thing ever. I figure that any story from Noh-Varr's point of view needs a soundtrack, so if you want to listen to the song while you're reading, [here's](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-FFN7Y4-nY) a link to a Youtube video with a very nice live rendition.
> 
> On the translation convention: Noh-Varr is the POV character for the entire story. Thus, any dialogue in brackets is in _English_ , not Kree--that's the foreign language for him. Once he gets the hang of English, though, we drop the brackets.

He woke slowly. Tried to open his eyes. Failed.

 _Pain._ New pain. _Wrong_ pain. Why wasn't he able to shunt?

His head hurt. His neck hurt. His skin crackled with static, as if he was struck by lightning not long ago—and, a fuzzy memory told him, he _was._ A lightning strike. Some form of telekinesis, being lifted through the air, flung against the wall. He had caught himself, yes, but still the impact pained. He couldn't remember who had done it, though; in the fog of the white run he only recalled that there had _been_ combat, not the combatants themselves. Either the lightning strike or the apparent concussion must have scrambled his neural shunt, thus the agony.

He shifted and found himself restrained, wrists cuffed Stone-Age style to the bars of the bed he lay in, and in his injured state now he was far more vulnerable than he had been in Midas' sphere. _Then I'm a prisoner. This must be wartime._

He tried to open his eyes again, succeeded this time, and stifled a pained cry at the light. As his vision cleared, he saw—a Kree?

“Captain?” he croaked, hoping unreasonably that everything had been a dream, that he'd had some kind of psychotic episode and was restrained in the sick bay while Plex scanned him.

No, a _human_ , young but white-haired like him. The human blinked at him and said something incomprehensible in the same language that Midas and his men had spoken, and then blurred out of sight in a burst of impossible speed.

So he _was_ a prisoner, then.

A moment later there was a commotion nearby, presumably outside the door of whatever cell he was being kept in, and then two other human figures interrupted his field of view. One was shortish, male, dark-haired but otherwise identical to the white-haired one. The other was taller, curvier, female, red-haired and smiling. The red-haired human said something that sounded like a question.

He grimaced and ground out, “Noh-Varr. Ensign. Diplomatic Corp number 425673. Commanding officer Glory, Captain, Diplomatic Corp number 178495.”

The two humans peered at him for a moment, looking confused. _Of course they don't speak a civilized language._ Then he heard a third voice, faintly digital, emanating from the ceiling— _some kind of primitive AI?_ It spoke with the two humans for a moment, and then there was a brief crackling noise and it said, in perfectly serviceable if somewhat archaic Kree, _“Greetings, Ensign Noh-Varr of the Diplomatic Corps. My name is Jarvis. I will be translating for you.”_

Noh-Varr snarled, his mouth somehow too dry even to spit nanites at his captors. “Am I a prisoner?”

Jarvis translated his question to the two humans, who shook their heads. The dark-haired one spoke and gestured at some length, expression somehow simultaneously angry and earnest.

_“You are not a prisoner. You were restrained for protection-yours-others. He said that you mistook the war-heroes-juvenile-in-training for enemies during their attack on the illegal-scientific-facility led by Midas-scientist-criminal. They subdued you and brought you here for medical care.”_

“Subdued...?” Noh-Varr's voice cracked in his throat. “ _That?_ _They...humans..._ _they_ subdued _me?_ How? What did they do? What weapons does this world _possess?_ They shot down my _ship_ and subdued _me?_ ”

Jarvis translated his comment before he could tell it not to, and the dark-haired male coughed apologetically and made an obscure gesture with his hands as he replied.

_“He says he used—excuse me, the term cannot be translated into Kree. It would be most accurate to say that he is an energy-weapon-high-powered-heavy-artillery-that-manipulates-physics. He says he is very sorry that he had to hurt you.”_

Startled, Noh-Varr regarded the dark-haired male with new respect. Then, as another pang of agony spiked through his head, he thought of another question. “Where is my ship?”

_“I can answer that myself, Ensign Noh-Varr. We located your ship at the illegal-scientific-facility. My creator is currently negotiating with it to transfer it to this facility, with which I am also assisting.”_

“What is your creator? What is this facility?”

 _“ <_Tony Stark> _is a war-hero-enhanced-scientific. You are currently in_ <Stark Tower.> _It is his military-base-corporate-headquarters-living-quarters.”_

The two humans were watching him, concerned. The red-haired one, the female, asked something, gesturing back towards where she had come in.

_“Potts-civilian-respected wishes to know whether she can remove your restraints. She has brought you breakfast.”_

Noh-Varr blinked. “What is a civilian doing on a military base?”

_“She lives here.”_

“That's...unusual.”

_“You will find, Ensign Noh-Varr, that Earth is a very complicated place.”_

He pondered that for a moment, watching the two humans watch him, and then said, “Fine. I agree to a truce. What's the other one's name?”

Jarvis relayed his comment and question and received a response. _“He is <_William Kaplan> _, war-hero-juvenile-in-training codename <_Wiccan.> _However, he asks that you call him <_Billy> _. You may refer to Potts-civilian-respected as_ <Miss Potts.> _”_

Noh-Varr nodded. He'd paid sufficient attention to the comments the humans made, and to Jarvis' translations, to figure out one or two words. Struggling, he pulled himself upright and held up his hands as best as he could in the cuffs. “<Truce.>” His throat still hurt. “<Billy. Miss Potts.>” He pointed to himself. “<Noh-Varr.>”

Billy relaxed, coming over to start undoing the cuffs. Miss Potts smiled and said something in a tone that reminded him painfully of Merree.

He winced, then winced again when the first wince made the light stab into his eyes. “Ah...I don't know the word for...”

 _“Perhaps the word you are searching for is_ <food.> _”_

“Does that mean sustenance of some kind?”

 _“It does.”_ A pause. _“If you are to be here for any length of time we will have to arrange for you to learn_ <English.> _”_

“Thank you.” He rubbed at his wrists, freed now, and tried, briefly, for a smile. It made his heart ache. “I...<food?>”

“<Food,>” said Miss Potts, bringing over a tray as Billy pulled a chair up to the side of the bed. “<It's nice to meet you, Noh-Varr.>”

He wanted to hate them. Really he did. These _humans_ had shot down his ship, had killed the rest of the crew and humiliated him in battle. But from what Jarvis had said, _they_ , these _particular_ humans, had only done the last. Midas was part of some enemy faction, not affiliated with them. And Miss Potts shooed Billy out of the room, and then cut up his meal when she noticed how badly his hands were shaking. She gave him something sweet and tangy to drink and turned down the lights when she saw that they pained him. The pain was still bizarre.

She didn't say anything when she saw him start to cry, concussed as he was and suddenly overwhelmed by loss and by pain he couldn't turn away. She didn't try to soothe him. She just sat, and waited, and put her hand on the railing near his. He appreciated that.

After he'd eaten she unfolded some kind of primitive tablet, tapped on it for a moment, and then handed it to him. She'd brought up a translation program. The interface was entirely in the same old-fashioned Kree that Jarvis spoke, with a translation box for their _English._ It was nothing like Plex—and _damn_ , he even missed _Plex—_ but it would do for the moment. He gestured his thanks to her.

She nodded and stood to go, and then paused and said something that, of course, he didn't understand. The screen translated it for him automatically: _do you want to sleep, or would you like me to put on some music while you're reading?_

 _Music._ He straightened up. Perhaps listening to some music would actually help his neural shunt to start working again, so that he could ignore the pain and focus on healing. He pointed to the word on his tablet, and she smiled at him and spoke at length to Jarvis.

Whatever they were putting on certainly wouldn't be _as_ good as one of the great heroic operas of Hala, but at least it would be—

— _glorious._

He typed frantically at the tablet, got the phrase he needed, squinted at the pronunciation guide, and then said, haltingly, “<What is this?>”

Miss Potts smiled wider. “<The Supremes.>”

He settled back against the pillows, staring in wonder at the point in the ceiling where the main speaker had apparently been placed. His shunt hadn't kicked back in completely, but things hurt...less.

Maybe Earth wasn't going to be so bad.

 

\--

 

He wasn't sure when he'd fallen asleep, but he woke up when people started arguing outside the door to his room, in a language that he still only half understood.

“<He attacked the kids! How could you bring him _here?_ >” A male voice, one he didn't recognize.

“<Tony!>” _That_ was Miss Potts, sounding what he could only assume was angry. “ <For one, if he's such a threat, why did you _leave_ him with the kids? _They_ brought him back here! And for _two,_ he's not _hostile,_ he's _grieving._ He thought they were with Midas and Doom. >”

There was a long silence, and then the man said, “<I talked to his ship's AI. It said it's a diplomatic ship, but it wouldn't tell me why they had someone so dangerous on board.>”

“<He's no more dangerous than the kids are. Actually he's barely even _older_ than them. He can't help how he's made, Tony—you haven't tried to lock Teddy up yet, have you? Or Billy, or Tommy? >”

“<I've considered it. Well, not Teddy, but—>”

“<Tony Stark, if you finish that sentence the way I think you want to, I am walking out that door.>”

“<Pepper—>”

“<Go talk to him. _Then_ you can think about whether he needs to be locked up. >” She paused. “<Put on some of your mother's old pop music, too. The girl groups. He liked those.>”

The man made a strange snorting sound. “<You want me to have a serious conversation when I'm listening to the _Ronettes?_ >”

“<Jarvis scanned him when he was unconscious. He's got some kind of synaesthesia; it'll act like a painkiller for him. Which, since Reed and Bruce still haven't figured out any pain meds that work on Kree, he needs.>”

Noh-Varr perked up at that as he struggled to sit up again. He'd only managed to catch the basic gist of the argument, but more music would be nice. The tablet with the language program he'd been studying had slid to the side of the bed while he slept; he grabbed it and woke up the screen as the door opened.

The man who came in and sat down in the chair Miss Potts had left looked tired and old and angry and not like a soldier at all, and so Noh-Varr was surprised when Jarvis' soft voice said, _“Ensign Noh-Varr, this is <_Tony Stark> _, war-hero-enhanced-scientific codename_ <Iron Man.> _He is the owner and designer of this military-base-corporate-headquarters-living-quarters.”_

Noh-Varr frowned. “But not the military commander?”

_“He is the second in command.”_

Tony Stark listened to this exchange and then said, “<So Pep says you don't actually want to kill us all or take over the world.>”

Noh-Varr took a moment to parse that sentence, concluded that “Pep” must refer to Miss Potts and not to any kind of personal enthusiasm or energy, and then shook his head. “<That...is not the plan.>”

“<Your ship tells me that you're a diplomat?>”

“<I was going to be.>” He ignored the yawning hole that opened in his gut at the memory. “<I was in training.>”

“<Yeah, I...>” For a moment Tony Stark looked as if he was at a loss for words. “<I'm really sorry. Um. For your loss.>”

 _Cold comfort,_ sneered the hole in his heart, but his mouth said, “ <Thank you.>” Then, after a moment, “<Why would you think I wanted to take over the world?>”

“<We haven't had great interactions with the Kree in the past. Not the nicest people to deal with. Very world-conquery, barring the one Danvers met. Your ship tells me that you're not from this dimension, but since we don't _know_ anything about your dimension, we had to assume the worst.”

Now _that—_ that explained a _lot._ The archaic Kree in which Jarvis spoke and the translation program was based. The handcuffs. The old-fashioned technology. This dimension wasn't _nearly_ as advanced as his. It was practically _medieval._

And that...

...that meant that there was _no_ chance of going home. A dimension this backwards couldn't possibly have technology sophisticated enough to locate his home.

He shut his eyes. Displaying emotional distress in front of a military officer was unbecoming to a Kree.

“<Now, our dimension-hopping tech's nowhere near yours, I get that, and your ship's facilities are pretty wrecked, but if we work with it we might be able to find your home dimension and send you back. That's up to you. Just wanted to make sure you knew it was an option.>”

His eyes snapped open. “<You have dimension-hopping technology?>”

“<Yeah. Your ship—>”

“<Plex. Its name is Plex.>”

“<Ok. Plex tells us that what we've got is pretty pitiful compared to what your people have, but we do have _something._ It's agreed to transport itself to a more secure location once we put you in contact with it, which we'll do once we've talked about another important thing. >”

The prospect of talking to Plex again was wonderful, but the heavy look on Tony Stark's face filled Noh-Varr with a horrible foreboding. He knew what the human was going to mention. He _knew._ He just didn't want to hear it. “ <What important thing?>”

“<Funeral arrangements.>”

 

\--

 

His crew—his friends, his _family—_ weren't the only ones for whom funeral arrangements needed to be made. When he was allowed out of the infirmary room and into the rest of the tower, later that day, he saw too-recent death in the wounded faces of the young heroes he was told he'd fought.

Billy. Teddy. Kate. Tommy. Eli, who was leaving, they told him, Eli wasn't going to be coming back after the funeral, he couldn't do this anymore.

And the name on all their lips, _their_ funeral arrangements. Cassie. Cassie, the youngest of them. Cassie, who was dead.

Kate watched him with suspicion, and Teddy smelled _wrong,_ somehow, and Eli didn't even want to meet his eyes, and Tommy made strained and incomprehensible jokes while his twin brother stared out the window. But they still all recognized that he had a gut wound that matched theirs, the bloody cavity of loss. They didn't turn him away.

Although Tommy _did_ tease him about his grasp of English, still stiff and clinical even after an all-night session with Plex's language-learning modules.

They were the _Young Avengers._ The English term was “superhero,” which made a great deal of sense to him once he'd had Jarvis explain it. Tony Stark and his compatriots were the _Avengers._ There were other teams, too, other superheroes. This world was war-torn and primitive, but its people fought their faults with heroes like he'd never seen on Hala. He'd only heard stories about what the humans called superheroes—on Hala they were the subjects of operas, glorious figureheads of days centuries gone, not people you might meet on the street.

He was in a world still experiencing its heroic age, and as much as he wanted to hate the place, he couldn't quite manage it. Every time he felt a surge of rage at the loss of his world and his family, it got jolted out of place by an exciting story, an interesting sight, a snatch of music.

Oh, Hala, the _music._ There was so _much_ of it. Half the time the humans didn't even seem to notice it, it was so constant. How could they not notice something so amazing? How could they live in such primitive conditions and yet be surrounded with so much glory that they didn't even think it was special? They had so many _words_ for music, so many groups that _made_ music, so many different _kinds_ of music.

And they were so _sad._

How could they not realize that they'd made something glorious?

Miss Potts arranged a funeral ceremony for the ship's crew, and it was a misery unlike any misery he'd ever felt before—he nearly collapsed when he caught a brief glimpse of Merree's body, lying in peaceful state in a coffin—but then at the funeral itself there was _singing._ They even had music for _death,_ and it was beautiful, voices layered and intertwining like some kind of heartbreaking DNA sequence.

Music for death. Music for life. Music for love and hate and happiness and sorrow and fighting and dancing and sex and laughter. Funny music, sad music, joyful music, angry music. Rock, pop, classical, Baroque—oh, _Bach,_ he could drown himself in Bach—heavy metal, Motown, Celtic, blues, jazz—Miss Potts played him Stevie Wonder and he could have _howled,_ it was so beautiful. It became a game to the Young Avengers, a way for them to mitigate their own pain. Play Noh-Varr some new music and watch how he reacts. Billy even showed him a film, a fictional thing, _The Sound of Music_ , and Noh-Varr couldn't quite understand why Tommy and Teddy groaned when they saw him sitting on the couch, arms around his knees, humming along to the songs.

How could his own dimension have _missed_ this? How had they managed to perfect themselves without at any point developing music as good as the Ronettes?

 

\--

 

He was still having difficulty getting the hang of colloquial English, and so as practice he worked on assigning English descriptors to each of the humans he saw regularly, linking them to the Kree words in his head.

Kate was _suspicious._ _Angry. Disapproving._ She didn't like him, he could tell. She tried to be friendly, of course, but he couldn't fault her for her dislike, not when he'd appeared so shortly after the death of her closest friend. It wasn't really _reasonable_ to link his arrival with Cassie's death, but humans of this age _weren't_ reasonable. Quite honestly, _he_ didn't always feel reasonable.

Eli was also _angry,_ and _aggressive._ _Argumentative._ Lots of “a” words. But he was also quiet in surprising moments, intellectual in a way that the others sometimes weren't. He loved to read. He worked at the library.

Tommy was _frustrating_ , and he _quivered_ , inhabiting his speed in a way that Noh-Varr did not. Billy was _neurotic_ and _enthusiastic_ but somehow also _ambiguous—_ there was a diffidence in his attitude towards being a superhero, a potential for evil that seemed odd, given how much joy he took in it. Teddy was _friendly_ and _kind_ and _protective_ , his presence was comforting, and also, _also_ he was a _Skrull_ , and _also_ Kree, which explained his strange scent.

He was excited when he heard that other young heroes, from other dimensions, would be coming to the funeral, but when he saw their primitive equipment his heart fell again. They barely even had tracking capabilities; apparently a fair amount of their initial navigations had been done via the bizarre energy manipulations they called _magic._ Magic still didn't make much sense to him, at least not the way humans seemed to conceive of it; it was clearly something more than the manipulation of probability and physics to them, but nobody had been able to explain quite what.

Then the gate opened and started spilling out more young heroes, human and not-quite-human and not human at all, and there were so many of them. So many _superheroes_ , so many opportunities to exercise his new vocabulary. Tim who was _distant_ but _good-natured_ and Stephanie who was _determined_ and Bart who was _open_ (not like a door but like one at the same time) and M'gann, Miss Martian, who was _familiar_ in so many ways and came to sit next to him when she found out where he was from and what had happened to him. Jaime, Kon-El, Jackson, Garfield, Raven, Victor, a different Cassie (often Cass instead). Another gate to another dimension to pick up Merlin, who was _amorous_ (according to the jokes his friends made) and _awestruck_ and who knew who he was, some oracular power that the Young Avengers weren't quite able to explain properly.

How could these humans have all these words for all these precise gradations of feeling and being without having the peace and enlightenment that Hala had attained? How were they such a mystery?

The realization of what he needed to do came as he watched the Young Avengers and their friends talking around the dinner table after Cassie's funeral. Obviously he wasn't going to be able to go back home; as much as he wanted to, the ship had always been his home, and the ship was _here._

If the ship was here, that meant his commission was still in effect.

Clearly it was his duty to bring enlightenment to this dimension. In fact, he could improve upon it—this Earth would be the center of a new Kree Empire, from which he could spread both transcendent peace _and_ the joys of close-harmony singing and piano solos.

“Hey, look,” said Tommy from the other end of the table. “I think that's the first time I've seen Noh-Varr smiling since he got here.”

 _“Tommy.”_ Kate elbowed him. “It's not like anyone's had a lot of reason to smile.”

“Well, _no._ That's why I'm mentioning it.”

“Hey, Noh-Varr.” Stephanie poked him in the ribs cheerfully—her eyes were still red, but it seemed that she only cried about anything once. “What's got you looking so happy?”

He shrugged. “Nothing much. Just making some plans.”

Merlin eyed him suspiciously over a can of soda. “You're not planning on founding a new Kree Empire, are you?”

“Possibly. Why do you ask?”

**Author's Note:**

> Poor Noh-Varr. My heart _aches_ for him sometime. I wanna give him a hug. And I swear that's not just an excuse to get a little closer to his sexy alien fabulousness.
> 
> As always, I crave feedback, so if you liked the story, please let me know! And if you have any questions that might require a _really_ detailed answer, you can also [hit me up on Tumblr](http://dangerouscommiesubversive.tumblr.com) so that I can share clarifications with the _class_. ^_^ (I'm also currently taking votes on there for a 30-Day OTP Challenge pairing to do, so go vote if you like reading my stuff!)


End file.
